


Bid My Blood to Run

by OrmondSacker



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hugh needs a hug, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Resurrection, a pile of blankets, and so much therapy, s2e06 The Sound of Thunder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrmondSacker/pseuds/OrmondSacker
Summary: Coming back to life is filled with difficulties and hardship, and sometimes the ones who are the closet to you are the ones who hurt you most.





	Bid My Blood to Run

**Author's Note:**

> Maturity rating is for just about everything but sex.
> 
> Since we have no canon information on Hugh's and Paul's ages I'm going with those of the actors, that is 45 for Hugh and 43 for Paul.

The light in the cabin’s living room is dim and apart from the faint hum of the electronics of the ship there is not a sound to be heard. Sitting on the couch, trying to focus on his padd and the poem on its screen, Hugh can’t help but notice the difference between now and before. 

Before he would have had music running in the background as he read, perhaps a cup of coffee on the table beside him that he slowly nipped. But he was a different man then. 

Now sounds grate on his ears, lights always seem too bright, too strong, and often causes him headaches. Food tastes differently than he remembers it. 

Even reading is not the same. 

‘Pristine’ dr Pollard called him, but Hugh Culber feels anything but pristine. He feels worn out, tired, off balance. Nothing is like it was,  _he_  isn’t like he was, but everyone expects him to be. 

Even Paul. 

Especially Paul. 

When he looks at the man who have been his partner in every way for so many years, he sees the light of hope in his eyes. Hope of a second chance, hope of return to normal. It makes him want to scream, shake him until he realizes how  _wrong_  everything inside Hugh is, to bring Paul’s carefully created castle in the sky crashing down. But there is part of him that cannot bring himself to crush those hopes, to destroy that delicate illusion. However much he feels he has changed, he still loves Paul with all his heart and he never could stand hurting him. 

The lines of the poem on the screen dance in front of his eyes, even with the light setting on its lowest focusing on the digital letter requires more focus than his eyes are capable of. Or maybe his brain. Maybe all of this is in his head? 

‘Of course, it’s all in your head, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.' 

Did someone tell him that once? Or did he read it somewhere? 

The swish of the door opening breaks his train of thought. Then the light is turned up, the sudden brightness like needles in his brain. 

“Hugh, darling. Why are you sitting in the dark? What do you want for dinner? I’m starving.” 

Maybe it’s the pain from the sudden brightness; maybe it’s the cheerfulness in Pauls’ voice, so discordant with his own mood; maybe it’s the normalcy of everything except him; maybe his patience and endurance has simply run out? But in that moment Hugh can feel his temper flare and his self-control begin to slip away between his fingers. 

He gets to his feet. Better leave before he says something he shouldn’t. 

“Nothing, I’m going for a walk,” he says, his voice taunt and strained. 

“Come on, you need to eat.” 

He should go. Just say nothing and leave. Nothing good can come by staying. He knows that, but he tired. Tired of running, from Paul, everyone, himself. Tired of hiding, of ignoring and pretending, pretending that everything is fine, when he’s as far from fine as he can be. Just tired. 

“Do I?” he snaps. “Do we know that I do?” 

“You’re only human, Hugh.” 

“Am I? Do we know  _that_ ? Do  you, I,  any of us ,  have the faintest  _idea_  concerning me?” 

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.” 

And with that the fragile threads on his temper snaps. 

“No, of course you don’t. You don’t understand, you don’t  _want_  to understand. You want to pretend that nothing ever happened, that it’s all normal. I died Paul. I  _died!_  And yet here I am. Good as new, better. Except, am I? Is this,” he gestures with his hands to his body, “Even really me?”  

His voice keeps rising as he speaks until it’s a shout. 

The look of pain on Paul’s face. Of shock. He can’t bear it, the pain of seeing it, knowing that he is the one inflicting it, stabs him deeper than the pain of the bright lights. But still his anger burns.  

“Who am I?  _How_  am I? Have you asked me that? Have you stopped to ask me how I am? Ever? Just once?” 

Paul’s face is a mask of pure anguish, the look of torment pushing Hugh into moving. Away. He can’t stay here. He brings only grief and pain now. 

The padd, the poem on its screen forgotten, falls numbly from his fingers, the sound of it crashing to the floor, deafening in the silent room. And then he’s gone, out the door. Far, far away. Where he can cause no more despair. 

 

**oOoOo**

 

Later he’ll wonder why no one stopped him. He must have looked a sight, blindly stumbling through the ship’s corridors. 

But then, people are very good at not seeing what they don’t want to, ignore what’s right in front of them when it is most convenient. Returning from the dead showed him that. 

When he’s once again capable of sensing anything but his own pain and misery he finds himself in the ship’s green house. Once the location of Paul’s mushroom garden it has since the decommission of the spore drive been converted into a more generic garden. Though fungi still have room here, so have many other types of flora, from a hundred different worlds, to be studied by the botanists and other scientists on board. Some of them from planets with very low lighting. 

It is to that part of the room that Hugh makes his way to. He sits down on the edge of one of the plant boxes, the leaves of the bush behind him unnoticed brushing him across the shoulder. Letting his eyes traces the outline of the bioluminescent fern in the opposing box he tries his best to forget stricken look in Paul’s eyes. 

Slowly the form of the fern begins to blur and Hugh can feel hot tears and they slide down his cheek. Slipping down onto the floor he presses his forehead against his knees and hugs his arms around his legs. 

How long he sits like this he doesn’t know. Vaguely he hears people pass through the room behind him, but none comes near, and hidden as he is by the plant boxes and flora no one sees him. In the end his tears run out as tears always do, leaving him with a raw throat and an aching chest, and the haunting memory of his fight with Paul. A fight that leaves him feeling even less himself. 

His anger had never been a loud thing, but cold, deep and immovable. Paul had once said that Hugh reminded him of a mountain chain when he got angry, that no matter how much the world might batter at him he would stand there, never budging an inch, once he got riled up. Nor would he yell, his voice would get cold and very precise instead. So yet another thing about him has changed, another facet that shapes him into a different form, a different Hugh Culber. 

Steps closing on him startles him, makes him look up. 

Paul is crouching down next to him, his eyes red rimmed and puffy. The sight feels like a slap. 

“Hugh.” 

Words rush through Hugh’s brain and he tries to sort through them, find the proper ones to apologize, but Paul interrupts him before he can start. 

“Please, let me say what I came here to say before you begin?” 

Hugh nods. 

“I’m sorry. You were right. I’ve been so desperate to have everything, to have  _us_ , back to normal, that I’ve been neglecting you. Overlooking how... bad you looked. I’m sorry, Hugh. I should have asked sooner, I should have asked you a million times, but I am asking now. How are you?” 

Something inside Hugh Culber breaks, a silent scream that tears itself loose somewhere inside and rips trough his veins. Almost blindly he reaches for Paul who takes his hand and pulls him close. 

Hugh buries his face in Paul’s shoulder, clutching at his shirt, like a drowning man grasping for anything that will keep him afloat, while Paul’s hands gently caressing his back, rocking them back and forth. 

“Tell me what you need of me,” Paul says softly, his lips right next to Hugh’s ear. “I’m sorry I’ve been so callous with you, you deserve so much better. But I’m asking you now. Let me help you.” 

Slowly Hugh pulls back until he can look at Paul. 

“Not really the place for that conversation.” 

Paul stands, pulling Hugh to his feet as well. 

“Come.” 

 

**oOoOo**

 

They walk back to their cabin side, by side, Paul never once letting go of Hugh’s hand. 

The light flares up bright when they step into the cabin. 

“Shall I dim it?” Paul asks. 

“Please.” 

Paul pulls him down to sit beside him on the couch. He takes Hugh’s hands in both of his, cradling them. 

“Talk to me, I’m listening. How are you?” 

Hugh takes a deep, shaky breath. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know how I am. Everything feels odd, off. Lights are too bright, sounds too loud. The food taste strange, not like I’m used to.” 

“The lights, it hurts doesn’t it? That’s why you keep it turned down.” 

“Sometimes. A lot of the time.” 

A flash of chagrin, there and gone again almost too quickly for Hugh to notice it, passes across Paul’s face, but whatever he’s thinking he keeps to himself. 

“Everything is so- Upside down. I’m certain of nothing, everything feels like its slipping away from me. I've never been a religious man, but I died and now I’m here again, and I remember everything that happened to me in between the two.” 

“You could say that yours were a bit of a special case. The circumstance regarding your- your death would not apply to most cases.” 

Hugh chuckles. 

“ _You_  were always the one that argued that some part of us, that something that made us uniquely us, survived in some form, Paul. Now you have evidence that you were right. That if I am really me as I appear to be, then your idea was true. To some extended at least. Are you just going to ignore that?” 

Paul looks away from him. 

“This doesn’t feel like something that should be pried at and picked apart,” he says. 

“Paul, I’ve never known you to be afraid of the truth.” 

Running his hands across his face Paul purses his lips, looking back at Hugh again. 

“Losing you, Hugh? It nearly destroyed me. When I came out of the network, we were in too much danger for me to think much, but once I had time to do it? I still don’t know how I got out of bed in the morning, how I managed to go about my day without you.” 

As Paul speaks, Hugh sees his own fear reflected in his partner’s eyes. That this gift is too good to be true, that Hugh is not who he appears to be, that he’s an imposter, who somehow has Hugh Culber’s memories, his feelings and who now wears his skin, but who is not him. 

“Paul.” 

Hugh cups the back of Paul’s head, leaning forward until their foreheads touches. 

“We’ve both been running, haven’t we?” Paul says. “And from the same thing.” 

“Yes, but I, we, can’t keep ignoring the elephant in the room,” Hugh adds. “It’s not going away.” 

“Expect this isn’t something that can be proven if all the test that have been run so far is not enough. Dr Pollard ran every single conceivable test and analysis. You are Hugh Culber." 

“Then why don’t I feel like it half the time?” 

“You died. You... survived it. That would leave a mark, a deep trauma, on anyone. Someone who experience deep trauma often doesn’t feel like themselves afterwards.” 

Ask Ash Tyler. 

The words hang between them, but neither of them says them. 

“But how does this explain my sensory issues? According to Pollard I’m perfect. But if I am, why does everything feel so strange?” 

Hugh sees the look in Paul’s eyes shift, they’re no longer looking at him but at some far-off point, the look he always gets when he’s chasing one of his ideas. Then a wide smile breaks across his face as he practically leaps of the couch and turns to face Hugh. 

“Yes, you are,” he says. “They made you perfect.” 

“I don’t follow.” 

Paul reaches out and takes his hands in his own. 

“Hugh, what is human DNA?” Before Hugh can answer, Paul goes on. “It’s information storage in biological form. More important to your case, it’s the blueprint for the body. What do you do when you build something you’ve never build before and all you have is a blueprint in your hand and the building materials?” 

Hugh slowly shakes his head, still not following. 

“You follow that instruction to the letter to make sure you get it right. Don’t you see, that was what the Jah’Sepp did. They rebuild your body, using the instructions in your DNA, but they – May – had no experience doing that, so rather than make a mess of it they followed those instruction to the letter.” 

Paul pulls him to his feet and grabs him by the shoulders, laughing. 

“They made you, your senses, of a human of twenty, younger even. But senses deteriorate with age...” 

And right then and there Hugh catches up to Paul’s train of thought. 

“So all that I remember is different because those were the senses of a forty-five year old man. The light feels too bright because it is according to how I remember it.” 

“Your brain is trying to reconcile new sensory input with old memories...” 

“...and it doesn’t add up, causing everything to feel so strange and unbalanced.” 

Hugh finds himself laughing too, giddy with relief. Dizzy, he sits back down on the couch, pulling Paul down with him so he straddles his thighs. Paul rests his hands on his shoulders, rubbing them lightly, while Hugh keeps his on the small of Paul’s back. 

“I should have thought of that. I’m a doctor, why didn’t I?” 

“You’ve... have a lot to deal with.” 

“There is that,” Hugh acknowledges. 

Of all of it his sensory issues might have been the least of them, at least looking from the outside, but they certainly felt like the ones who loomed the largest. Perhaps the solidity of them made them feel that way, the way they tied themselves to the physical world and with how they made him feel less like the man he was. 

He lets go of Paul’s back with one hand and holds it up in front of himself, studying it. 

“I’ll get used to it, eventually I suppose. New memories overlying old ones.” 

“Yes. But-” Paul breaks off abruptly, as if he’d said more than he intended. 

Hugh looks at him, sees him study Hugh’s hand too, a thoughtful expression on his face. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Paul says, too quickly and with a smile that Hugh can tell isn’t genuine. 

“Tell me. Paul, you were never anything less than honest with me before. It was what made it work, made us work. Don’t change that now.” 

Paul takes his hand in his own, cradling it between his palms, nodding slowly. 

“I’m not sure it should cause you headaches,” he says. “Even if your eyes are sharper, more receptive to light, your brain should be able to handle it. That’s been remade too. I’m sorry, I thought I had an answer.” 

Hugh pulls his hand out of Paul’s and presses a finger to Paul’s lips, silencing him. 

“That’s not what I want of you. That’s not what I look to you for.” 

Paul pulls back a little. 

“What do you want?” 

“For you to hear me, see me.” 

“I do.” Paul takes his hand again and presses a kiss against the knuckles. “I do.” 

“And to let me find my own answers. I’m not talking about practical problems here, you know that. This isn’t something you can solve for me, Paul.” 

He knows this might be the hardest thing he’s ever asked of Paul. Paul have always been the man who found the answers, the one with a thousand questions who would stop at nothing and let nothing get in his way, who would move the stars and bend space to find the answers to them. Hugh knows that ask him to stop doing that, to not try chase down the answers to Hugh’s problems, is asking him to go against who he fundamentally is and that it might create a rift between them that cannot be healed. Yet another reason he has kept his silence till now. 

“I understand.” 

“Do you, Paul? Do you really?” 

“I think so, yes. You need to... reclaim not just your body but your life. You need to find your own way home. I will be here for you, always, but I know I can’t find that path for you. I’ll try to keep my peace, I promise.” 

“Thank you.” 

Paul wraps his arms around Hugh’s shoulders and Hugh buries his face in Paul’s chest his mind occupied with the point Paul had brought up. Even if the conflict between sensory input and sensory memories is part of the cause of his feeling of alienation from his body, it does not explain why bright lights gives him headaches, why loud noises sometimes hurt. Recreated neural pathways should be able to manage the new information overload, even if that overload conflicts with his memory. 

But if there isn’t a physical cause, then it has to be mental or emotional. Something that makes light and sound feel wrong, dangerous. 

Dangerous. 

Of course. 

“Conditioned response,” he says, his voice muffled against Paul’s chest. 

Paul pushes him back enough that he can look down on his face. 

“Sorry?” 

“Conditioned response. That’s what’s causing it.” 

“Conditioned from what?” 

“My time in the network. Paul, I spend... I’m not sure if time works the same in there as it does out here, but quite a bit of time there. And in there, bright light, sounds above a whisper, it meant pain unless I got away. I didn’t understand what the Jah’Sepp were, or what they were doing, I just knew it hurt me, and that light and sound heralded it. That would, could, have cause a conditioned response, that ties light and sound-” 

“-to pain.” 

“Yes.” 

He looks up at Paul. 

“Turn up the light.” 

“Hugh, that isn’t-” 

“Turn them up.” 

Paul makes to protest again and Hugh grabs him by the hips, dislodging him, pushing him off him so he can stand. 

“Computer-” 

“Hugh, stop.” 

Hugh turns back to face Paul. 

“My body, my rules. I’m not there anymore.” 

“But it’ll still hurt you.” 

“Because my head still thinks I’m there and I need to stop.” 

“Turning up the light will do nothing to change that. All it’ll do is hurt you.” 

Hugh takes two steps back, away from Paul. 

“Computer, turn the lights up. Full strength.” 

The pain is instant, as is the panic that he’s ignored so hard he didn’t even know it was there till now. The need to move, run, something. Anything. 

Reflexively he closes his eyes, covering them with his hand. 

_I’m not there. I’m on the Discovery, the real Discovery. I’m home._ _I’m home._  

The words ring hollow in his head and even through closed eyes the light is still too bright and painful. 

“Computer, lights down, 80 percent,” he hears Paul say. Then a hand touches his shoulder and guides him back to the couch. 

Paul says nothing more after they sit down, but puts his arm around Hugh’s shoulder and holds him close. 

“I thought- I know it doesn’t work like that, I just hoped...” Hugh finally says. 

“I know. Hugh... You need help. Help I can’t give you.” 

“I know. I just don’t know if I should be talking to a psychiatrist or a priest. So much of this feels out of the domain of a therapist.” 

“And so much of it is certainly outside the area of expertise of any priest. Unless you find someone who’s both.” 

“That might be the answer.” 

“Whatever you choose, wherever your path takes you, I’ll be right here beside you. I promise you that.” Paul gently touches Hugh’s jaw, turning his head so they’re face to face. “No more running away from each other, for either of us.” 

In the quiet, dimly lit cabin, putting his hand over Paul’s, Hugh latches on to that promise, holding it in his heart as a lifeline, a promise, that he will find his way back home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes the title is a line from an Evanescence song, how edgy of me.
> 
> You can yell at me on [tumblr](https://jewishcomeradebot.tumblr.com/) if you don't feel like leaving a comment here.


End file.
